Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors
JULES FEIFFER
SEPTEMBER 25, 1996
Jules Feiffer, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning and an award-winning playwright, will deliver two lectures in September as Reed College's first Stephen Ostrow Distinguished Visitor in the Visual Arts.
Feiffer will speak on the relation of word and image in his work in the first lecture, "Love and Politics: The First 40 Years," which took place on September 25 in Reed's Vollum Lecture Hall. On Thursday, September 25 in the psychology auditorium, Feiffer discussed "Cartooning and Dissent."
"Feiffer," the weekly cartoon strip by Jules Feiffer, first appeared in New York's Village Voice in 1956 and is now syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1986. "For nearly four decades Jules Feiffer's cartoon strips have dependably given us an ironic afterword for whatever issue or personality is in the news. . . . he can still bring some heat and unpredictability to turbulent issues," wrote Lawrence Christon in the Los Angeles Times in 1993. Other awards Feiffer has won for his cartooning are a special George Polk Memorial Award in 1962, a Newspaper Guild Page One Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, and a Capital Press Club Award.
Although cartooning is his primary medium for his political and social commentary, Feiffer has written several successful plays, screenplays, and books. His plays--Little Murders, Grown-Ups, Knock Knock, and Eliot Loves--have brought him critical acclaim, including an Obie and two Outer Critics Circle Awards. He wrote the screenplay for the films Carnal Knowledge, Popeye, and I Want to Go Home, winner of the Venice Film Festival's Best Screenplay award. He won the Academy Award for his animated feature Munro in 1961. Feiffer has also published 16 collections of cartoons, one cartoon novel, and two novels. PBS produced and aired an hour-long television biography called "Feiffer's America," and two of Feiffer's plays have been adapted for television.